From Love to Hate: The Story of Petunia
by isthatacorner
Summary: This is a story of growing up and growing apart and not looking back with regret. Petunia Evans Dursley remembers having a special sister and learning how to hate her. rated for very mild language


**Author: isthatacorner**

**Title: From Love to Hate: The Story of Petunia**

**Summary: Petunia looks back and remembers her life and the way that it interlaced with her special younger sister.**

**Disclaimer: If Petunia, Vernon etc were mine I would own the HP-verse except there would probably be no HP as we know it. So. Seeing as HP is HP as we know it, it's a fairly safe bet that I am not the owner. Besides, look at this, if JK wrote like me, she'd be unpublished and none of us would have any HP so lets all be grateful. **

**1 of 1**

**From Love to Hate: The Story of **

**_Petunia_**

I hate witchcraft And truly, who could blame me? Its taken everything from me that I've ever loved. A beloved sister. My parents. My nephew glares at me whenever he sees me, and that's every day since he lives in my home. He's been glaring since he discovered that his mother was _abnormal_ in the same way that he is. I glare back. Those eyes of his are so angry and defiant when they look at me. Much like hers were. I hate his eyes, when they glare too long I have to turn away. It sickens me that never once in his time with us have I ever won a staring contest against him. I shouldn't be surprised. It's her looking back at me, and I never won a battle ofwills staring contest against her either. I hate my nephew. Is that bad? I wish I could apologize for it but I wouldn't mean it. At all. Those eyes. And then the rest of him, he's a dead ringer for his father. When people who had known them see him for the first time, they always react the same way. A startled yelp, with their hand coming up to press against their mouths. Its like looking into the grave, the past. I hated his father. His father took his mother even further away from me than that school alone had. When they married he moved her into a secret place. They explained about Voldermort and Death Eaters, but I knew the truth. He just wanted to finish what the school had been threatening to do since the day she had received a letter on heavy parchment paper years ago. To completely sever her ties with us, with me, forever.

I didn't get to say goodbye to her. I didn't get to talk to her one last time. I never got to go to her house and touch her things and see how she lived. I'll never know if my baby sister was a good house keeper and for some reason, that thought brings tears to my eyes. Well, it's not "for some reason" not really. Our parents were strict when we were growing up. Especially our mother. We knew that they loved us, no question, but there were rules. Our house ran like the hands on a Swiss watch--precisely. Without flaw. Lily and I were a unit. A team against our parents. When one of us made a mistake, or "accidentally" trampled mud onto our mothers spotless white carpet in the living room the two of us would stand together and neither would claim the mess.

I remember one time, Mother had made Lily so mad that when Mother was walking down the hall towards the stairs Lily slammed her door shut and screamed "BITCH!" as loudly as she could. Mother always attempted to move slowly and gracefully, an example of the way that she wanted us to move but that day she flew down the hall. Her careful, gentle steps were replaced in that instant with a thundering that would startle elephants. She grabbed the door knob intending, I imagine, to go and knock Lily from one side of the room to the next. But she couldn't get the door open. There were no locks on the bedrooms, Mother was terrified of fires starting in the middle of the night and not being able to get us out. But she could not open the door. She threw herself against it, she kicked it, she screamed. It was awful. We didn't know for another two years why or how Lily, a scrawny girl of 9 years old, could keep our mother out of the room.

I'll always remember the day that Lily received that twice-damned piece of paper. Until this point Lily and I were connected at the hip. We had never been apart for more than the hours that separated us during the school day. I, myself, had never shown any propensity for magic. I was never special. But I was two years older than Lily and we were best friends. If she was being invited to come to some "special" school, of course I would be invited too. The runners of this alleged school certainly didn't expect our parents to send an 11 year old girl, Heaven knows where, alone for months at a time. That's what I thought that month as I sat waiting for a parchment of my own.

In the beginning I was patient. Lily sat next to me and we would laughingly talk about this grand adventure that we were about to embark on. The second week that we waited, Lily and I, Lily was still content to laugh and play as we talked about this school that would teach us magic. The third week I was anxious. By the time the fourth week, and the approaching deadline to mail in Lily's acceptance, arrived I was furious. I would have been hurt, of course, over not being included _if it had been an actual school_. I didn't think Hogwarts was a real place, you understand. I was convinced that it was all a huge scam designed to get Mother and Father to part with some of their hard earned money. Or, even, it was all an elaborate ruse and they were going to sell Lily into some child sex ring. If that were the case, then of course I wouldn't be invited to go. I was older than my sister, I would know immediately what was going on and get my sister and I out of there, with all of our parents money quick as anything! I sat down with Lily and tried to explain all of this to her. Why she couldn't go. She didn't listen to me. She was too excited. The day that our family piled into the car I refused to give her a hug or a kiss and I told her that I wouldn't miss her at all. I told her that Eliza Whitmore, a girl who lived down the road was my new best friend and she was actually my age and I wouldn't have to suffer the embarrassment of walking to school with a little kid like her anymore. I told her that I was glad that she was going.

The night before, I had pleaded my case before her. She absolutely didn't believe me when I told her that it might be a child sex ring. I asked her, wouldn't she be lonely and wouldn't she, wouldn't she miss me? I told her that if the wand were in the other hand that I would absolutely not ever go to a school so far from her. I thought that she had given in. She had looked down at the school robe that she had so neatly placed on top of another school robe in the trunk that she was taking to that school with her. She threw her arms around me and gave me a kiss and said that of course she would miss me, but, she was still going. She promised to teach me everything that she learned at this school. I was cold to her, and I didn't hug her back. Then or at the train station.

She wrote me from school. Telling me all of the fun that she was having and all of the people that she was meeting and she couldn't wait to show me some of the things that she was learning to do with that "funny piece of wood". She told me that she was particularly good at Charms, whatever that was. She told me that some people were mean to her because no one else in our family was a witch. I eagerly awaited each one of her letters, anxious to hear what my little sister was doing. I began to writing to her religiously. Oh how I looked forward to those letters delivered by owl post. I thought maybe we could stay best friends. I still have the letters that she wrote to me from those first few semesters. Vernon tried to get me to throw them out once. He yelled, and he stormed and blustered about the room. Ranting and raving. The thing with Vernon is, he seems like a blowhard. He's loud and more often than not completely irrational. But, he knows it and he has the good sense to trust me to tell him when to calm down considering I tend to not fly off the handle. This was one of those times. I told him I would not be throwing away the letters. And just like that, back they went into the chest that Lily had given me for my 16th birthday present. It sat on my vanity next to the silver backed brush set that used to sit on my mothers vanity. And Vernon shuffled on down the stairs and made himself a late night sandwich.

Anyways. Her first visit home. I was so excited to see her! My, I was so excited. I had bothered Mother and Father all day the day before. Checking and double checking what time her train would be arriving and what time would we need to leave in order to meet her. Her first couple of days back were awkward. She was happy to see us, she had missed us terribly she had said. But, she missed her school and the friends she had made there. That night at dinner she went on and on about them. How one girl, Alice was her absolute best friend in the world and they were practically _sisters_. Mother and Father ate it all up with a knife and fork They urged her to tell them more about Alice and more about the irritating brat of a boy that constantly threw spit balls at her during class, James Potter. I had stopped listening. Lily had another best friend? A sister? I hadn't become so close to anyone else. I still only had one sister. I tried to tell myself it was just a saying. A poor choice of words on her part. And besides, it was good for her to become friends with someone who was actually there and could do my part in the day to day aspects of sisterhood, but I was still her favorite. After dinner Mother, Father and I all sat in a row on the couch and asked Lily to show us something that she had learned. She said that she couldn't it was against the rules. She showed us her books, that we had already seen when we went with her to buy them. So she showed us a quill that changed colors as she wrote, and gave us all satchels of magical candy. She went to her room soon after

I knocked on her door and asked her if she couldn't show me a little something. Like she had promised she would in her letters. She said that she was sorry and she couldn't. I asked what she was doing. Homework. Couldn't I help? No, you wouldn't know any of this, Pet. That's what she called me, Pet. Ever since she was a very little girl. I asked her if maybe I could sit with her awhile. I had missed her so much. She assured me that she missed me too, but she really had to get that work done and she was tired and she wanted to send an owl message to Alice. Her best friend. Her sister.

I learned to resent Lily that first visit. When she went back to school, she started sending me letters again. Picking up where we had left off before she had come home for Christmas. Except there was a difference. I was different. I was furious at her. And this wasn't just the jealousy that I had felt when she chose to go to that school instead of staying with me. Before she went, even while I was being eaten alive with envy I still thought we could be friends. That we could be a vital part of each other's lives. She told me that I didn't have anything to worry about. After that first visit, I knew that that wasn't true. I did have something to worry about. I had to worry about losing my best friend to something that I didn't understand, to people that I didn't know. They had their own language. They dressed in their own style. The denim skirts and knee high socks that Lily had once favored had been replaced by flashy colors, even flashier clothes and robes. Robes of all things. They were different. They were weird, they were _freaks_ and they were turning my beloved little sister into one of them. Fine, I thought. If Lily wants to go off with them then just let her. Just let her, what do I care, anyways? Its not like she's my sister anymore.

I still answered when she wrote to me. But unlike before, when I would pounce and devour a letter the second that Annabelle, her owl, dropped one off and quickly shooting off a response were gone. I let days, and sometimes weeks pass before I wrote to her. Sometimes I didn't write her back at all.

During the summer I became more convinced than ever that that school was not a good place for my sister. She was sad the first couple of weeks. She missed her friends. But after those weeks were up she was back to the girl that I had refused to say goodbye to months before. We talked about everything and we laughed together, and it was perfect. And then Alice came for a visit. They didn't even try to include me in their fun. They holed up in Lily's room for hours at a time or went on long walks together. At dinner they talked about things that I didn't understand and afterwards they were curled up on the couch giggling and whispering in each others ears. After Alice left, Lily could not be consoled. We were just too boring and ordinary for her now. I was too boring for her. I couldn't compare to her magical friends. Mother and Father let her go visit Alice towards the end of the summer. Alice's parents took both girls to the train station that year.

The first half of Lily's second year Lily wrote me regularly. In the beginning I had tried to let go of my bitterness and write her back. But even in her letters to me her abnormality, the freakiness that was her school and her friends wormed its way into her words. She spoke of things I didn't understand and used phrases that I had never heard of, and she didn't offer explanations for them. Alice was on the Quidditch team. She wrote once. She's a seeker. Like I had any clue what that meant. She didn't come home for Christmas that year, and I spent my summer with friends.

A whole year went by and I didn't see my sister. Unfortunately that was just the beginning. From her 3rd year until her last I really only saw Lily in passing. Eliza Whitmore truly had become my best friend. Her family had moved out into the county. Vernon lived next door to them. The moment that my eyes met his I fell in love. My every free moment was spent at Eliza's. So I could see him. He was four years older than me. I was 15, just turned and he was a University man of 19 years of age. No one really understood what was happening between us. At such young ages the age gap between us should have been very pronounced. He should have had no reason to spend so much of his time with me, but neither of us could deny how we felt. We were in love, and that was the way we intended to stay. He proposed to me on my 17th birthday. I, of course, said yes. Naturally, involved as I was with planning my wedding which was to take place on the day that I turned 18 I drifted even further apart from my younger sister. The last time I had spent any real time with her was the summer in between her first and second years of school. Life was such a fast moving thing. I remember I bought Vernon home with me to discuss some wedding things with Mother and Father and Lily was there. Oh, she had to have been in her fifth or sixth year at that school of hers. Winter break and I hadn't even considered it, or the thought that she might actually be at home, I hadn't seen her there in so long. She was there that evening along with her friend Alice and Alice's boyfriend Frank. Lily had a boy with her too. I don't remember anything at all about him. He's not the boy she married. It was awkward sitting across the dinner table from my sister. She was nothing more to me than a stranger who shared my name by this point. She looked nothing like the little girl that I had been so close to. She had added highlights to her beautiful hair, and her clothes were skin tight and low cut. She looked, to me at least, trashy. I was positive that if Lily and her little friends weren't all magical and my parents weren't truly fascinated by all things magical, they would have kicked the lot of them out. My mother had taught Lily and I to dress like, and act like ladies. To be lady's. The girl sitting across the table from me with her head tossed back with laughter and a blonde braid draped across her dinner plate was not lady(1). I was disgusted. She had truly become a freak. Just like I had always feared. I would have rather lost her to a child sex ring and never see her again than to see her turned into this. That night my countenance must have given away my thoughts because she had suddenly straightened up and shot a look through me that chilled me so thoroughly that even now,just thinking of it, I have to pull my sweater tighter around me.

After that night it would be five more years until I saw Lily again. On the night that would become the last night that I would ever see her. Her and her husband had apparently gotten married in a quiet ceremony on the day that they graduated from that school. I remember thinking, when I was introduced to him that night, that he was that boy she had complained about her first year at school. It made me smile.

Their world was under attack. A freak had turned against his own. Not even their powerful wizarding prison would be enough to hold him and he was gunning for Lily and her new husband and the baby that she was carrying. I was listening to all of this in a sort of daze. My gaze had dropped down to her waist. We were pregnant at the same time. When we were little girls we had talked of marrying brothers and living in houses that were next door to each other and having babies at the same time and being best friends forever(2). It looked like one of those would be true. Only one. The Potters were going into hiding and wouldn't be out until the war was over. I hugged my sister goodbye this time and our belly's bumped. My son gave a violent kick. Dudley hadn't liked Harry even then Lily pulled back and laughed. "You have a soccer player in there, huh?" She gave me a kiss and told me that she was sorry that things had turned out the way they had. All at once the anger and resentment that I had been harboring boiled to the front. I turned away from her without responding. It was her fault that our relationship had fallen apart. What reason did she have to be sorry? Things were the way that she wanted them, after all. I hated that she had apologized.

I never saw her again. Not even a funeral. I don't know how witches and wizards conduct such things but I wasn't invited to come and say my goodbyes when me younger sister and her husband were killed. Months earlier our parents had died suddenly. There had been a strange green cloud hanging low over the roof, and by the time Vernon and I had gone to check the matter out they were dead. The official word was heart failure, all though there hadn't been anything wrong with their hearts. Lily sent a note apologizing. Death Eaters. Roguewizards had taken our parents life. Lily asked that I put flowers on the graves and say a prayer for her, even for this she couldn't come out of hiding. I hated her.

No one told me that my sister was dead. When muggle people, that's what they called us nonmagical people: muggles, when we killed one another the police came and told us face to face. I was told that my sister, my little sister and former best friend was dead by a note. I had woken up early as I always do to make breakfast for Vernon and Dudley. He was such a healthy baby. I went to the front door to see if the paper had come. Instead of the daily news a baby in swaddling clothes was on my doorstep with a note attached to him. His parents were dead. My sister had died protecting her baby and the blood that flows in me flows in him and our connection would keep him safe from He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, the wizard my sister had taken her small family into hiding to escape.

Every time I see her son who has always hated me for the way that I allow him to be treated and the way that I treat him myself, I hate her more. And I know that she hates me for doing this to her little boy. I can't justify my behavior in any way, rational or irrational. I guess you could say that I resent his being alive and her not. We will never have the chance to make amends now. But that isn't it. He's abnormal the same way my sister and her husband were. It will kill him the same way it killed them. And finally, the magic will be out of my family. And I'm not sorry.

1.Lily is not a slut and she doesn't particularly look like one. Petunia however, is a prude. She looks like one, she dresses like one and

she considers anyone who doesn't conform to her prudish standards slutty.

2.I'm actually not sure as to the actual age of Dudley. Sorry.


End file.
